Out In The Cold

By Bill Saporito

You can't eat victory. Even as the Taliban's suicidal stragglers are being flushed from Kandahar and Tora Bora, some 1.4 million refugees inside Afghanistan face the double cruelty of hunger and homelessness just as winter stakes its annual claim. The situation was dire even before Sept. 11. Last winter 500 people perished from cold and hunger in the western city of Herat. Today about 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs in relief-work argot) are scattered among camps outside that city, with more returning from Iran daily. An estimated 6 million Afghans are what the World Food Program labels "food insecure"--increasingly vulnerable to malnutrition and disease. "We're seeing the cumulative effects of years of suffering," says U.N. officer Stephanie Bunker in Islamabad. "The population is already weakened, so it's hard for many of them." Relief agencies take some solace in knowing there are fewer refugees than they originally feared. Reasons for this less dire outcome: the brevity of the war, the crushing poverty and people's realization they are safe at home because U.S. bombs have generally been accurate. Yet thousands of others, especially near Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, are homeless, a consequence of the ongoing civil war. Relief agencies have adequate food and supplies, but getting the goods where they are needed has been dicey, especially in areas where the Taliban still roams. Delivery won't get much easier even when the Taliban is disarmed. Aid will still have to pass through the control of warlords, who will take their cut.

--By Bill Saporito. With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad and Terry McCarthy/Kabul

With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad and Terry McCarthy/Kabul